The groundwork you can’t see yet

by Maria George.

There are seasons of life when the path ahead feels like frosted glass. You know there’s something on the other side , maybe another version of you, some next chapter ,but you can’t see it clearly yet and instead of feeling excited about the possibilities, you feel stuck between who you were and who you might become.

It’s strange, not having an answer to the questions like what if I make the wrong choice? What if I stay here forever, waiting for clarity that never comes? Uncertainty has a way of shrinking your world. It makes the smallest decisions feel impossibly heavy.

Should I start something new or wait for the “right” time? And

what even counts as the right time?

We're so conditioned to chase milestones, to treat life like a ladder we climb, that we forget how to live when the next rung isn’t visible. The cultural obsession with direction leaves very little space for the messy, undefined chapters where nothing seems to move. But what if those chapters are just as essential? What if this pause, this sense of being stuck, is not a detour but the groundwork for something you can’t yet name?

We are taught to believe that life should unfold in a straight line, a series of neatly linked steps that prove we’re moving forward. But it’s not a perfect sequence. It’s a loop, a spiral, a series of sideways steps that don’t make sense until you look back years later. We measure our progress against timelines that were never ours to begin with: graduate by this age,be “successful” by thirty. When those milestones slip out of reach, we panic , we feel like failures, even when we’re just living in the natural rhythm of a life that doesn’t follow a script.

When I look back, the moments that had more impact on me than most other were often ones that began in a place of not knowing. The friendships that saved me were rarely planned,the opportunities that turned into stepping stones were often the ones I took on a whim. There’s a strange kind of magic in not knowing, which is hard to see when you’re in it. When you’re in the fog, all you want is to see the horizon. Sometimes we wait for clarity before we act, as if a perfect map will suddenly appear and tell us exactly where to go but I learnt that clarity doesn’t come before action,it comes after , even if it’s not the “right” thing. You only realize it later, when you look back and see how far you’ve come.

So maybe you don’t need to know what’s next to keep going,maybe you just need to know the next small step. The next thing that doesn’t make sense to anyone but you. I think we forget how powerful small steps are. We think our lives have to be built on big, impressive moves, but most of the time it’s the quiet, almost invisible shifts that shape who we become. Moreover we live in a culture that worships productivity. Every day you’re expected to be moving, building, growing but what no one tells you is that some seasons of life are meant for staying still. for watching and listening. Staying still doesn’t mean nothing is happening , it means something deeper is happening beneath the surface.

On the other hand, there’s the fear of falling behind. It’s impossible not to compare yourself to other people, especially in a world where everyone’s milestones are on display. You see people getting jobs ,moving cities,building something shiny and impressive, and you can’t help but wonder if you’re doing something wrong. But comparison is a distortion. No one posts the nights they spent crying because they didn’t know what they were doing either. No one shares the weeks they spent doubting every decision. Everyone’s timeline looks clearer in hindsight.

The truth is, no one really knows what they’re doing. Some people are just better at pretending. We like to believe that certainty is the foundation for action, but more often, action is what creates certainty. It's like walking through fog; the only way to see more of the road is to keep walking. You can’t wait for perfect visibility before you take the first step. Looking back, some of my most “directionless” chapters were also the most transformative. I didn’t see it at the time, but being lost taught me resilience. It taught me to trust myself even when I didn't have evidence that things would work out.

The truth is, life is not made of answers. It’s made of moments and most of those moments are small,ordinary and easy to overlook but when you string them together, they create a life ,your life. maybe you don’t know what’s next right now. Maybe you’re scared you’ll never figure it out but one day you’ll look back on this season and see that even here, even in the fog, you were moving. You were building something. You were becoming someone new.

for The Exclusive,

Maria George